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Baghdad - Ihsan Ghaidan, a policeman in one of Iraq's most volatile
provinces, admits he stands little chance of promotion and notes his
performance is increasingly under the microscope, for one simple reason.

He is overweight, and Iraq's security leaders are not happy.

In fact, he is not just overweight - standing 177cm and weighing 116kg,
Ghaidan is obese, according to the US Department of Health's online body mass
index calculator.

And Ghaidan is among those whom Iraq's security forces want to put the
squeeze on. By one measure, the vast majority of soldiers and policemen in his
province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, are overweight.

"My body is not fit, and that is definitely affecting my movement while
on duty," he said.

"My movement is usually slow, and especially during raids, to the
extent that I sometimes have to stay and guard cars, just in case there is a
chase, which I cannot do."

70% to 80%

Iraq's laws regulating the military and police require that all members meet
certain health and fitness requirements, and officials are increasingly
demanding that the rules be strictly applied.

According to Dolir Hassan, a provincial councillor in Diyala, which still
suffers near-daily violence, between 70% and 80% of the police and army in the
province are obese.

"Most sufferers of this disease are officers, because of the lack of
oversight," he complained.

Weight problems are common among Iraqi policemen, largely as a result of lax
internal health and fitness standards, little daily exercise, and unhealthy
diets heavy on meat and light on greens.

Hassan said in previous decades an overweight officer risked being brought
before a supervisory committee that had the power to fire the offending member
of the security forces.

Now, however, such an apparatus has fallen out of use, but top officials are
pushing for tough rules to be applied to the letter.

"We ordered, three months ago, to return to old promotion regulations,
which require [police] to not be obese, and to be at a normal weight,"
Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi told AFP.

He said that this represented the best hope of reducing weight en masse
among the security forces - those who do not comply will not be promoted.

Obstacle

However, in a country where corruption in the security forces remains a key
problem, whether the rules will be strictly applied remains an open question.

Ex-army officer Abduljabbar Abdulrahman recalled that warnings would be
issued to anyone in the police and the army whose weight was ballooning, and
officers up for promotion would often be forced to exercise to meet minimum
fitness requirements.

At the time, before the 2003 US-led invasion, the Iraqi army still struggled
with overweight soldiers, though those were primarily conscripts who were not
forced to maintain a healthy weight, Abdulrahman noted.

He and others made reference to a report by Al-Arabiya satellite television,
a copy of which was uploaded onto the video-sharing website YouTube in August
2011, showing Saddam-era leaders exercising on camera under the supervision of
elite Republican Guard officers.

The video, which had around 150 000 views at the time of publication, has
highlighted key differences in health and fitness between Saddam-era security
forces and their current incarnations.

Country-wide

Those current officers, and their weight problems, are not just an issue in
Diyala province, either.

Captain Muqdad al-Mussawi, spokesperson for police forces in Najaf province,
south of Baghdad, said that the interior ministry's new rules had been sent to
all precincts, while a senior cop in the northern province of Kirkuk said they
wanted to force chronically overweight officers to retire.

"We have proven that being fat represents a big obstacle to building
security institutions, and fighting terrorism and organised crime," said
the top officer, who declined to be identified.

He said the province had instituted guidelines whereby a policeman standing
180cm tall had to weigh between 70kg and 75kg.

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